Cali and the Zoo

We arrived in Cali after an eventful night bus. The police seem to get onboard every bus here to check identification. We handed over our passports like good Gringos and I watched them outside the bus flicking through all the pages with a torch. A short time later we had our passports back and they were focussing on one couple they'd hauled off the bus. 

As we were sitting there waiting one of the cops got on and said 'where's the Australians?' And so off the bus we went whilst everyone looked at us like hardened drug traffickers. 

My suspicion is that they couldn't actually find our entry stamps to Colombia since both are passports are so full of stamps. So after using the rear light of the bus to show the cop that we had legally entered the country we were back on the bus. And off we went, without that couple! 

After the usual horrendous night sleep on the bus we arrived in Cali, the so-called Salsa capital of Colombia and it was cooking. 

We had one day before Spaghetti O had to leave to meet Mr Spaghetti O while he was on his R&R so we decided to go to the zoo since Lonely Planet had proclaimed it to be the best in South America. 

And it was pretty good. I think the cool thing about going to the zoo here is that you get to see some animals you'd never see in Australia. Like this guy. A King Vulture. I thought he was amazing and couldn't stop looking at him.

  

Plus some of these guys too. Pretty pink flamingos. 

The largest monkey in South America which is quite a cutie. 

And a condor which seems to be the national bird of just about every country in South America. With good reason though. They're pretty impressive. There's two types in the world. The Andean Condor and the Californian Condor. I can't remember which one wins though. Maybe the Andean one with the wingspan. Apologies for the substandard photo but you can see how big he is in comparison to that human. 

Also I've seen these weird little tapir creatures at Singapore Zoo before. Well their Asian brothers. These are the South American variety taking a quick dip.

And guess what?! They even had a new Australia section! Apparently Australia is where the water is gold! I told some guy inside that it was untrue. No wonder people here keep telling us how cold Australia is (true story!!). They clearly have it mixed up in their school text books with somewhere else. At first we just brushed off that cold comment as confusion but people keep saying it and I can assure you I now know enough Spanish to confirm this!

So the Australia section came complete with cockatoos, kookaburras, parakeets (yep) kangaroos, wallabies, some lizards and black swans. The black swans were clearly an afterthought as they weren't inside the actual Australia enclosure. They were just outside looking a bit lost swimming around an island of lemurs in the same water as marine iguanas. Hah!

Oh and here's a lost emu with a new llama friend. But Bolivia does have an emu creature. When I first arrived in Santa Cruz I took a taxi to my hostel and saw them wandering around. I thought they were actually emus but it's called a Rhea. Who knew?! Not me.